Water Off a Bear's Back

The pool at the Desert Inn was empty, which was exactly what Elena needed. She'd told Mark she was at a leadership retreat, but really she was three hours from home, sitting on the concrete edge with her feet submerged, watching the water ripple around her ankles. Her iPhone lay face-down on the lounge chair — three missed calls from Mark, two from her mother. She couldn't face either of them right now.

"You look like you're waiting for something."

Elena jumped. A man stood at the pool gate, maybe forty, expensive watch, the kind of easy confidence that usually annoyed her. He held the bear by its ear — a stuffed thing, worn brown fur, one eye missing. Childish, incongruous against his tailored shirt.

"Just killing time," she said.

He dropped into the adjacent lounge chair, let the bear rest between them like a chaperone. "My daughter left him at the airport. Turned the car around, but he was already gone. Security checkpoint took him. Can you believe they made me buy another ticket just to reunite them?"

Elena found herself smiling. "What's his name?"

"Captain. She's six. Everything's an expedition." He gestured to the charging cable tangled around her phone. "Yours died?"

"Battery's fine. I just —" Elena stopped. Why was she telling a stranger this? "I don't want to answer it. Does that make sense?"

"Perfect sense." He stretched his arms behind his head. "I come here every Tuesday. My wife thinks I'm at racquetball. Sometimes I just sit. Sometimes I swim. The water doesn't ask anything."

They sat in companionable silence until sunset painted the pool gold. A stranger, but somehow more present than anyone she'd spoken to in months.

"You should turn it on," he said eventually. "Whatever's waiting — work, husband, whatever — it'll still be there. But the water won't."

He left with Captain under his arm, and Elena sat there until the pool lights flickered on. She picked up her phone, connected the cable. Mark had texted: *Thinking of you. Hope the retreat's good.*

The water didn't ask anything. But people did.

She powered it off, slid into the pool, and let herself float, face to the sky, suspended somewhere between drowning and flying.